You’re already in the lift by the time the rain starts hammering the glass. The penthouse button glows under your finger like a secret, and you lean back against the mirror-paneled wall, watching your reflection shift and breathe. The city stretches out beneath you—Manchester glowing in soft gold and grey as evening folds in.

Regulus had texted earlier. Just the usual.

“Back from training. You still coming?”

You always do. Thursdays are yours. The ritual is quiet, unspoken, but constant.

The lift glides open, and his flat welcomes you the way he does—with silence and subtle protections you feel rather than see. There’s that faint scent again: sandalwood, clove, and a whisper of something older. Magic, maybe. Or just him.

You step inside.

He’s in the kitchen, his back to you, shirt clinging damp to his skin. Muscles taut from training, hair slightly tousled, faint trails of sweat still glistening at his nape. He hasn’t bothered to change yet. The television’s on low in the background, muted—match footage, you assume, from whatever scrimmage the team had today.

“Door was unlocked,” you say, toeing off your shoes and hanging your coat where it always goes.

He glances over his shoulder, eyes cool and calculating, always scanning—even when you’re the one walking in.

“Wards recognized you,” he replies, voice low and even. “They let you in. That should tell you something.”

You raise a brow, unbothered. “That you’ve gone soft.”

He smirks faintly. Not quite a smile. Never quite. “That I trust you.”

You cross to the fridge and grab two bottles of water—enchanted, of course, because Regulus doesn’t do things halfway. He takes one with a nod of thanks, twisting off the cap and downing it in one go.

There’s a tension to him tonight. Not the usual residual stress from training or the prickly paranoia of living between two worlds. This is something quieter. Subsurface. Like the calm before a breach.